March 4, 2009
BELLINGHAM, Wash. -
MICHELLE NOLAN - THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Half a century after his first crack at public-address announcing as an unusually brave Burlington-Edison freshman called for emergency duty at a basketball game, Pat Rowe really has something to talk about.
The former Bellingham City Council member is getting a totally unexpected chance to serve as a public-address announcer in spring training for the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres.
That's right - any spring training visitors from Whatcom County who are familiar with his hearty voice will know right away it's Pat Rowe living a fan's dream. Rowe
Rowe turned 65 on Sunday, March 1, but he felt like a kid with a sense of wonder while basking in the baseball atmosphere of Peoria, Ariz.
"I'll be doing two games a week," said Rowe, who enjoyed a long career as a local radio broadcaster and thus isn't the least bit shy about speaking over the microphone. "It's going well. I'm having a great time. Hey, it's 87 degrees and paradise."
"I was enjoying spring training last year when I heard an old Bellingham friend, Bill Vreeke, doing the public-address," Rowe said in a phone interview from Arizona. "When I went up to say hello, Bill told me he could use some help (this year). I passed an audition at a couple of fall league games, and here I am. Even before I called my first game, I spent my first check taking Bill and his wife out to dinner."
Rowe is especially excited that he'll get the chance to call out Ken Griffey Jr.'s name now that he's back with Seattle.
"I never did see him when he played with the Bellingham Mariners," said Rowe, who is enjoying spring training for the fifth time in six years..
Since being stricken with polio at age 8 - about three years before Jonas Salk developed the vaccine -- Rowe has walked with crutches.
That hasn't, however, prevented Rowe from enjoying a rich world of activities in sports.
"I served as manager of the Burlington-Edison basketball team, and I still remember that day they asked me to do the public address. I didn't do it very well, but I had a blast. I kept hoping the regular kid wouldn't come back, but he always did."
Instead, Rowe found a way to play for high stakes - he shot free throws to decide which manager would do the dirty work.
"Hey, that's was serious pressure - shooting to see who would have to pick up all the towels," he said.
Needless to say, the other guy usually got stuck with the work.
In the 1970s, when he was in his late 20s and early 30s, he became something of a legend by shimmying up a ladder to the "bird's nest" to broadcast Western Washington University basketball games.
Before that, he was a communications major at Washington State University and announced basketball and baseball. He served as a football spotter for legendary broadcaster Bob Robertson and got to know the remarkable baseball coach Bobo Brayton, among other big names.
He'll never forget working in Ellensburg, where he broadcasted Central Washington's loss to Kentucky State in the NAIA national championship game in Kansas City, Mo. The next year, when he came to Bellingham, he went to the national tournament to call Western's games.
Rowe also has been a familiar sight locally as a remarkable one-armed golfer.
He developed his love of sports from his father, Clarence, a former semipro baseball catcher and a star hitter, and his mother, Edith, a crack basketball player in her youth. His father was a school principal, and his mother a teacher in Burlington.
"I remember I had to call my father Mr. Rowe, and when I got paddled in the principal's office, I always got the hardest paddle."
Rowe eventually went on to become a city council member in 1994-99 and also served as development director of the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce.
He still does volunteer work and serves as a chamber booster. Rowe and his son, James, currently own the One Stop Movie Rental kiosks (99-cent new releases) at Yorky's in Fairhaven and the Silver Beach Market near Lake Whatcom.
